Probability of ‘Verbability’

A friend asked me to ‘Fedex’ some documents for her. She also asked to ‘xerox’ a copy of it before ‘fedexing’ them to her. I promised her to do but postponed it for a while because I could not push aside my urge to write about this fancy way of converting a brand name into day to day nouns or verbs.

As we know ‘Fedex’ is a trade name of famous courier service and ‘Xerox’ is a photocopier. I have no idea whether these two brands actually initiated those businesses first time in the world, but the wide use of the service or the equipment made them strong enough to change the word category which actually they belong. If further explained, from simple proper noun to a noun or a verb in English language. When mother duck quacks, we, the little ducks quack back; therefore it takes no time to enter into languages like ours.

It is really surprising to see how many trademarks are used in everyday English. There are interesting little histories behind some words that were originally trademarks. Heroin, for instance was first produced as a medical replacement for morphine and so used to be a company product like Panadol. Tabloid as a trademark referred to a compressed medical tablet. The meaning was then applied to a compressed style of journalism. And Zipper was originally a trademark for a make of boots with zippers rather than the fastening themselves. Along with aspirin, dry ice, escalator, Jacuzzi and ping pong, these illustrate how trademark names have come to pervade everyday English.

This lead to another thought: was ‘Google’ so successful in becoming known because it had the same verbability like Xerox or Fedex? Yes. I know there is no such a word called ‘Verbability’. ‘Google’ is not only a noun (for the search engine) but a verb both present (googling), past (googled) and future tense (to google). Notice that this is a feature that Look Smart, Microsoft Search, Yahoo and Britannica do not have. I have never known anyone to yahoo themselves!

The process of making new words also needs a new name. Nowadays the process of coinage has a different face. We can distinguish two kinds of “creativity” in language. In one case there is the ability of speakers, using existing resource, to produce and understand novel expressions. In the other case, the one for which we use the term coining, a speaker uses existing patterns in the language for creating new resources.

For example when I firstly heard the word ‘underwhelmed’ I was impressed by what I took to be the speaker’s cleverness in creating this instantly understandable neologism on the fly.

By the way, some information I ‘googled’, showed me interesting facts about the word origins of our day today products. It is rather fascinating how the originally intended meaning got changed over the time. Some have even got political and social interpretations in relation to their brand names.

Coca Cola commemorates the coca leaves and Kola nuts originally used as flavorings, whereas Pepsi alludes to dyspepsia, an ailment the drink was designed to alleviate. Shell started off importing seashells and both Lada and Nike commemorate gods. Animals also feature: Reebok is an antelope and Lycos is short for a family of wolf spiders. As Sri Lankans we all know ‘Parakumba’ was a name for great kings, but also equally known as a powder which used for teeth cleaning purpose.

One of my work mates said that he is glad that still we do not ‘Tiffney’ our sweethearts. You might aware that Tiffney is a famous jewelry brand and generally women get delighted when their men propose them with a Tiffney ring. I wonder someday my girls would say ‘mum he Tiffnied me!’